It’s gotten a little harder to track comings and goings at the Upper Valley’s newspaper of record. For several years, a small box at the bottom of page A2 listed newsroom staff, including editors, photographers, and reporters. On Aug. 21 it disappeared, replaced by a generic contact box. That date happened to coincide with arts and food reporter Marion Umpleby’s last day, which came after the departures of five senior staffers this spring, plus two retirements at the end of 2025.
Now, there’s news of two more newsroom staff leaving. Reporter Clare Shanahan’s last day was Thursday, Sept. 3. Longtime staff photographer James M. Patterson is also moving on from the paper. The two were fêted by former colleagues at a gathering Thursday evening. With their departures, the newsroom is left with six editorial staff, only two of whom—community editor and reporter Liz Sauchelli and multimedia manager and photographer Alex Driehaus—have been there more than a year.
Neither Shanahan nor Patterson would comment on their reasons for leaving or what they plan to do next, but they leave a hole in the newsroom. Shanahan, who began as a staff writer at the Valley News in September, 2024, has been a mainstay civic affairs reporter there, covering development, municipal government, politics, and other unglamorous but crucial issues that touch the daily fabric of Upper Valley residents’ lives.
Patterson, meanwhile, documented the region for the paper for over two decades. Over the years, he has amassed a rich and varied record of life in these parts. “He had these stark photos about life in the Upper Valley, but he also has this tremendous empathy for the people he’s reporting on and photographing,” says former news editor John Gregg. “He’d have these incredible photos of cows being let out of the barn after winter, or trappers doing their work—his photos were sometimes controversial, but they showed what life is in the Upper Valley. And like the other photographers, he was always out in the community; he developed some really important stories.” Gregg cites as an example Patterson’s work on Mandy Dube, a Unity NH resident who struggled with serious mental illness and whose case eventually led to a class-action lawsuit and settlement aimed at improving mental health services in the state.
Patterson’s photographic work for the Valley News rewards attention: His photos are alive with activity and the full range of human experience, unwritten but eloquent. His photo atop an Aug. 24 story about a Claremont teen accused of the drunk driving death of a WRJ man captures the charged, emotion-laden glance between the 18-year-old and his family (because of copyright, Patterson’s VN photos can’t be reproduced here, but just click through). His 2018 photo of a Woodstock hockey mom hugging her son through the rinkside glass after he scored the first goal of an until-then fruitless championship game captures… well, you should just go see it and read the story of how it happened. You can get a sense of the breadth and depth of his work—and of the Valley News in more robust days—by scrolling through his author page.
Though the newsroom has been depleted over the last few months, it’s worth pointing out that it’s still in better shape than many local news organizations, which have faced extreme hardship over the last two decades—and in many cases been wrung dry by predatory owners. By contrast, the Valley News is owned by the family-run Newspapers of New England, which has three dailies in New Hampshire, three in Massachusetts’ northern Pioneer Valley, and several weeklies. In an emailed statement (full text below), publisher Rich Wallace writes, “We’ve hired new people, who will be joining us soon, and we have offers out to excellent reporters, among the dozens of applications we’ve received. The transition you see represents our commitment to investing in excellent local journalism, not a retreat from it.”
Still, the departure of almost the entire senior editorial and writing and photography staff of the Valley News is not just a loss in terms of content, but of decades of journalism experience and knowledge of the Upper Valley. And it’s not really clear yet what it will mean both for the Valley News itself and for the region.
The Valley News editorial masthead as it stood on its last day in the print edition. In the weeks since, James Patterson, Clare Shanahan, and Marion Umpleby have left the paper.
There are some clues on the journalism jobs website Journalismjobs.com, where the newspaper is advertising for reporters and a news editor who would replace Nora Doyle-Burr, who left earlier this year for VTDigger. Notably, however, it has not listed the job once held by top editor Matt Clary—and before him by Maggie Cassidy, Marty Frank, Jeff Good, Jim Fox, and others—or the managing editor position held until earlier this year by Geoff Hansen, who moved over to a job at NNE. These were key roles, filled by people with honed editorial judgment, an appreciation for the craft of print journalism and an eye for storytelling, and a fervent dedication to training and nurturing younger generations of reporters. Nor does the Valley News seem to be looking to replace Patterson or Jen Hauck, another accomplished photographer who left earlier this year.
Instead, the two job listings can be read to suggest that the Valley News will be a trimmed-down organization—possibly off-loading some editorial strategy to publisher Rich Wallace and editors within the NNE organization who live outside the Upper Valley—and placing more responsibility in the hands of reporters for taking their own photos and developing their own digital graphics. NNE maintains lean editorial crews in the newsrooms at the three Pioneer Valley dailies: the Greenfield Recorder, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and the Athol Daily News. The Recorder and the Gazette each have their own managing editors, but they share the same assistant editor (who also has that role at the Daily News). The editor of the Daily News, meanwhile, is also the local news editor for the Recorder.
NNE’s flagship paper, the Concord Monitor, supports an editor-in-chief, three editor/reporters, a photographer, a reporter/columnist, four news reporters, and a sports reporter—though, like the Valley News, most of its newsroom staff is only a few years out of college. Its publisher, Steve Leone, is also NNE’s VP for news and plays an active role in the Valley News’s strategy.
None of the Valley News journalists who’ve left recently would talk openly about their reasons, but staff there took enormous pride in their work, and in their dedication to the paper, its history, and its independent-minded newsroom culture. The reporters, photographer, and editors—Liz Sauchelli and deputy editor Molly Hughes—who remain are a talented and hard-working crew, but as a longtime Valley News reader wrote in a recent letter to the editor about the newspaper’s turnover, “Sometimes change can be a good thing. But in this particular case, I think we’ve lost something that is not easily replaced.”
In an emailed response yesterday to questions about where the paper is headed, Valley News publisher Rich Wallace pushed back against such concerns and the notion that the paper will be anything but local. He writes:
The Valley News has been an anchor of the Upper Valley for more than 70 years and we appreciate that our readers and community care as deeply about our well being as we care about theirs.
We are increasing the number of reporters. We’ve hired new people, who will be joining us soon, and we have offers out to excellent reporters, among the dozens of applications we’ve received. The transition you see represents our commitment to investing in excellent local journalism, not a retreat from it.
The Valley News will continue to be what it has always been: a local paper, with the stories controlled by local editors focused on local reporting. The same family that has owned the paper for almost 50 years believes in independent journalism. Our sister publications in Concord, NH; Peterborough, NH; Greenfield, Mass.; and Northampton, Mass. have each been recognized as among the best of their size in New England in recent years. Producing quality, original, daily journalism is our company's mission.
Transitions take work and time, and we are genuinely excited about the future of the Valley News and look forward to introducing our new newsroom team members to our readers soon.
Stay tuned.
